Pakistan plans to skip meeting on Afghanistan

Wednesday

Nov 30, 2011 at 12:01 AMNov 30, 2011 at 11:43 AM

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan announced yesterday that it will not attend an important international conference on Afghanistan's security and development that is scheduled to begin in less than a week. The action is in protest of the weekend strikes by NATO forces that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers.

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan announced yesterday that it will not attend an important international conference on Afghanistan’s security and development that is scheduled to begin in less than a week. The action is in protest of the weekend strikes by NATO forces that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers.

Also yesterday, the Pakistani military offered its first detailed account of the weekend episode, which differed widely from NATO and Afghan diplomat accounts.

The army ruled out U.S. assertions that the strikes were accidental and instead termed them “an unprovoked attack of blatant aggression.”

The decision to boycott the conference, which is scheduled to start on Monday in Bonn, Germany, was announced after a special meeting of the Pakistani cabinet in the eastern city of Lahore.

“Pakistan looks forward to the success of this conference but in view of the developments and prevailing circumstances has decided not to participate in the conference,” a government statement said.

Afghan officials had been urging Pakistan to attend the conference. More than 50 countries are sending representatives as part of an effort to showcase the international commitment to Afghanistan’s security and to reassure Afghans and potential foreign investors about the nation’s future.

Pakistan already has blocked all NATO logistical supplies that cross the border into Afghanistan. It also has given the CIA 15 days to vacate the Shamsi air base, from which it has run its campaign of drone strikes into Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Yesterday, in a briefing to local television news anchors and newspaper editors at the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi, two top Pakistani generals — Lt. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the chief of the general staff, and Maj. Gen. Ashfaq Nadeem, the director-general of military operations — differed with accounts provided by U.S. officials about what precipitated the weekend strikes.

Nadeem called the strikes that killed at least 24 Pakistani soldiers “an unprovoked attack of blatant aggression” where “all coordination procedures were violated.”

“It is not possible that the ISAF/NATO forces did not know of location of Pakistani posts,” he was quoted as saying, according to several participants.

Nadeem maintained that the fire did not start from the Pakistani side of the border and blamed NATO helicopters for striking two military posts, Volcano and Boulder. He also emphasized that there was no militant activity from the Pakistani side into Afghanistan.

In the briefing yesterday, Pakistani military officials also expressed a lack of confidence in the investigations promised by U.S. officials.

“Past investigations of similar attacks have not been to our satisfaction and no one was punished,” a military official was quoted as saying.

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